Amy Cortese penned this week's summary.
The Week in impact investing: Breaking through
?? Openings and opportunities.?“There’ll be a little disturbance,” US President?Donald Trump?acknowledged?in this week’s address to Congress. As markets plunged and companies warned of price hikes, the blusterer-in-chief paused for at least a month most of his market-roiling tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods.
Pushing back, it turns out, works. Federal courts have been swatting down some of Trump’s more blatant overreaches. The Supreme Court upheld?a lower court ruling to release $2 billion in foreign aid for already completed work, as?Isaac Silk?noted, while a federal judge?barred?the administration from “pausing, freezing, blocking, canceling, suspending, terminating or otherwise impeding the disbursement of appropriated federal funds.” That includes the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s “green bank” program, which was set up to facilitate low-cost loans for energy retrofits and more.
Calvert Impact -led?Climate United,?fired off?its own legal missive to the EPA, demanding answers and the release of $7 billion in appropriated funds frozen at Citibank, as?Dennis Price?and I reported. The group is preparing to file a lawsuit. On Wednesday, Sherrell Dorsey will check in with another awardee,?Amir Kirkwood?of Justice Climate Fund, on continuing the work despite the uncertainty.
Amid the chaos, openings are emerging. The economic case trumps short-term policy. There is bipartisan support for next-gen nuclear reactors, geothermal energy and?sustainable aviation fuel, as?Clint Wilder?illuminated. Helping workers gain ownership stakes in their employers plays to populist and impact crowds.
Predistribution Initiative’s?Delilah Rothenberg?and?Juan Jardon-Pina?spot an opportunity to?lift up such strategies?in Africa.
As other advanced economies slash aid, climate diplomats gathered in Brazil to chart a path forward for adaptation and resilience funding,?Louie Woodall?reported.
In the yin-yang of LP-GP dynamics, investors in private impact funds, like?Jessica Droste Yagan?and?Priya Parrish, are?differentiating themselves?on how much they can improve the impact outcomes, and ultimately the financial returns, of the GPs they invest in.
Capricorn Investment Group, founded by former eBay president?Jeffrey Skoll, is investing in innovative fund managers poised to scale impact financing. “We want to help capitalize and grow the asset management industry that is purpose-built to deploy this capital,” William Orum?told me.
When federal funding and policies fail us, private sector actions become more critical. “This is the time for urgent, constructive conversation, minus the presumption of imperial fealty,” Yale’s?Jeff Sonnenfeld and?Stephen Henriques?wrote?in a The New York Times op-ed urging CEOs to stand up. “When single voices are shouted down, a chorus breaks through.”
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